


nervous tic motion of the head

by cryptidgay



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Ascension, Core Mechanics, First Meeting, Gen, atlantis georgias
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:48:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29852112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryptidgay/pseuds/cryptidgay
Summary: it has been three weeks and gerri cannot shake the feeling that something is going to go horribly, horribly wrong. by other measures it has been three years, enough time for the core mechanics to cinch the final championship needed for their ascension.
Relationships: Geraldine Frost & Bees Taswell
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	nervous tic motion of the head

**Author's Note:**

> got excited about expansion teams!
> 
> in my head, geraldine "gerri" frost (they/them) was one of a set of identical triplets who all played for the atlantis georgias, and was the only one still surviving by the time the georgias ascended. this fucked them up a bit, hence pregame ritual: fixating on their impending death. 
> 
> bees taswell (she/her) is a batter for the core mechanics, and i picture her like [this](https://kayleerowena.tumblr.com/post/644760697621839872/hello-to-the-new-blaseball-teams-and-especially), and am using her to push my 'medieval illuminated manuscripts are just comics' agenda, just a little bit, since her pregame ritual is comics.
> 
> this is rooted in the idea that the expansion teams are all old blaseball teams who ascended before the return of internet blaseball. i think that's it for notes!

it has been three weeks and gerri cannot shake the feeling that something is going to go horribly, horribly wrong.

they’re above the water, and above the _everything_ for that matter. the georgias have ascended. _this is your reward,_ for winning. it has, for geraldine frost, been more a matter of endurance than of victory: they are neither spectacular nor abysmal, and they have watched one mirror-image triplet buried alive, another mirror-image burn, and it is a miracle they have made it to wherever their team is now, playing against something that looks like a peanut, or a collection of peanuts spilled across the bright grass.

it has been three weeks. by other measures it has been three years, enough time for the core mechanics to cinch the final championship needed for their ascension.

it’s three more games till gerri pitches against them. (everything in threes except them.) long after the game, gerri sits in the emptied-out dugout. they don’t leave the stadium until everyone else has been out for at least an hour; they don’t like feeling like someone could sneak up behind them, keep their back to the wall of the dugout until the only thing left is the stars in the sky, different than the ones they’d been able to see from immateria.

they’re distracted for a moment, looking at the stars, when someone sits loudly beside them. they twist in their seat so quickly that they fall out of it. for a moment all they see is the dust cloud they’ve kicked up in their scrambling and a flat mask halfway visible behind it — not the mask of the umpires they’re used to, but still not a face, still tilting at a ninety-degree angle from the neck it’s hovering above, eerie enough that geraldine is _certain_ they are about to look their own death in the eyes.

but the dust cloud clears and gerri’s eyes stay wide open until the image before them clarifies: not an umpire but a girl, short, leaning over the bench with head tilted. a woven circle hovers in front of her face, and her head hovers above her neck, and gerri can see something moving in the space between neck and skull — something crawling or flying, iridescent blue like the woman’s hair, oblong. she is not unremarkable in the least, but does not seem deadly.

“wasn’t tryin’ to scare you,” she says in a voice that comes from everywhere, several voices overlapping in stereo. when she offers a hand to help gerri up, they stare at it with still-wide eyes for a long moment before taking it, dusting their uniform off as they sit on the bench, back flush to the wall once more.

she’s in a mechs uniform, and there’s a set of paints and brushes and what looks like gold leaf on the bench between them that was not there before, alongside an elaborately bound book. gerri recognizes her, vaguely, from pitching earlier. can’t put a name to a sort-of-face.

“i’m fine,” gerri says. their voice is smaller than the stranger’s. only comes from one place, though it used to be that they and their siblings would speak in unison, like a party trick, or pick up where the other left off. being the last one standing means gerri can remember what it felt to have a voice that echoed, but cannot make it happen no matter how hard they try.

“alright if i sit here?” their face, or where their face would be, is still turned to gerri, still tilted at a questioning angle. “it has the best light, and we’ve only been here a few days, but i need to — record what’s happenin’. you know. for history.”

“like a diary?”

“nah, a — well,” and she picks the book up from the bench. from this close, gerri can see a few shimmering bees fly out of her neck, land on her hands. she sees unworried, but gerri runs through their memory to recall if they’ve ever been stung by a bee in their long life, if they’re allergic, if it would kill them. (yes, no, probably not.)

when she opens the book, it’s filled with elaborately-drawn letters, gold strewn throughout intricate patterns. panels show scenes from before in the same steady ink; gerri recognizes the face of the league’s commissioner on the page that’s flipped to, and a stadium opposite, nested in the hollow of the “c” that begins “core mechanics.”

“a comic,” gerri says, leaning back from the book.

“somethin’ like that.” the stranger’s laugh comes from all around them. she holds a hand out again, bees dispersing from skin to tangle in her shock-blue hair. “i’m taswell. folks on my team’ve started callin’ me bees.”

gerri hesitates only a moment before shaking her hand. “geraldine frost. people call me gerri.”

**Author's Note:**

> thx for reading! hmu on tumblr @ rogueumpire!


End file.
